Broadband News

Only a miserly 20 per cent of customer’s broadband connections in the UK actually deliver the speeds they claim to according to a survey by moneysupermarket. The survey questioned 43,000 and found that 44 per cent of broadband users were getting half the speed that they signed up for, with those in remote areas suffering the worst.

There are many factors which cause these differences such as the distance of your household from your local exchange (i.e. the further you are the slower the speed), line interference, the quality of your line and also the number of people who share the same provider connection in the same area.

The problem most users have is the small print given in contracts, which explains all these issues but is not made obvious to the customer.

ISP Tiscali confirmed that there are a number of factors which affect line speed, with a spokesman saying “DSL broadband product may vary across the day and across the month. Also general local conditions can be affected by the quality of the copper telephone line or the distance of the home from the local exchange.”

Tiscali state that they try to make it as obvious as possible to customers when they sign up of the likelihood of what speeds they can realistically get. “In addition, the investment in infrastructure and additional bandwidth that Tiscali is making now in order to roll out our new TV service, will vastly benefit broadband customers in those areas,” Tiscali’s spokesperson said.
Whatever the case it seems due to customer dissatisfaction that ISPs should be making it more obvious to customers on the speeds they will realistically get before signing up. Although all ISPs use ‘up to’ when mentioning speeds (i.e. up to 8Mb), however this is not proving enough information and is confusing customers as the statistics show.

Are you getting the speeds you were told when you signed up? let us know by making your comment below.